Jehovahs
Witnesses as a Nazi victim group 
commemorating and honouring

Those liberated from concentration camps, prisons and
Nazi orphanages 60 years ago included thousands of
Jehovahs Witnesses, or "Bible Students".
Their beliefs were in total contradiction to the ideas of
National Socialism. Those in Power made believers suffer
for their non-conformance from the start  from 1933
until the end of their rule. Over 12,000 Jehovahs
Witnesses were directly affected by Nazi persecution in
Germany and the occupied countries. This included over
10,000 people who were arrested, most of whom received a
prison sentence and 4,000 of whom were held in one or
more concentration camps. The Jehovahs Witnesses
comprised a category of their own in the concentration
camps, forced to wear a purple triangle. They became an
object of particular hatred by the SS. Many of the
children of Jehovahs Witnesses were locked up in
Nazi reform schools or given to families loyal to the
regime. Counting those whose names we know, over 1,400
Jehovahs Witnesses died in Europe because of Nazi
persecution.

On this 60th anniversary of the liberation
of the concentration camps, it is right that the
Brandenburg Memorials Foundation focuses on those
survivors who are still alive. Only a small number of
Jehovahs Witnesses are still alive from the
generation that experienced how dissenters were
stigmatised and viciously persecuted through crimes by
the state. To avoid any repetition of such a regime of
horror, we must heed Professor Roman Herzogs appeal
to us all to find forms of remembrance that will continue
to have an effect in the future: this is the task of
every generation that follows. As some post war reports
by other concentration camp survivors make evident, the
manner in which the Jehovahs Witnesses adhered to
their faith, their moral integrity, and their humanity
has been vividly remembered. Despite this, the persecuted
Jehovahs Witnesses were forgotten by others to a
very great extent for a long time. Today, when we look
back, we do see recent, meritorious attempts to keep the
memory of the Jehovahs Witnesses as a victim group
alive.

In 1994, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington DC drew attention to the persecution of
Jehovahs Witnesses in the Nazi period. Following
this, in 1996, the religious community produced a video
documentary for public events entitled
"Jehovahs Witnesses Stand Firm Against Nazi
Assault", which included interviews with
contemporary witnesses and historians. They also created
a travelling exhibition on the period of persecution with
some 50 panels. Many citizens found out about the
exhibition through reports in local newspapers. Over
600,000 visitors watched the video documentary in Germany
alone. Events such as these here and abroad have helped
to preserve public remembrance of the Jehovahs
Witnesses steadfast advocacy of the Bibles
teaching, in contradiction to the Nazi doctrines.

The historical archive of the Jehovahs Witnesses
in Selters in the Taunus region of Germany was also set
up during this period. The archive documents numerous
concrete cases of persecution of believers and makes them
accessible to researchers. This work extends beyond the
period of Nazi terror; in the GDR, from 1950 onwards,
hundreds of victims of the Nazis (and thousands of other
Jehovahs Witnesses) were regarded as members of a
banned religion on the basis of their beliefs, and
sentenced to long periods in prison. This happened, for
example, to over 70 former prisoners of Sachsenhausen
Concentration Camp. Tragically, several of these died in
GDR prisons. Right up until its collapse, the East German
Communist regime used its Stasi network to spread
disinformation in order to bring Jehovahs Witnesses
into disrepute in both the East and the West. This dark
period of history should be included when we remember the
stand the Jehovahs Witnesses took for religious
freedom in Germany. In recent years, historians and
contemporary witnesses have published numerous accounts
of what Jehovahs Witnesses experienced at the hands
of the Nazi and Communist dictatorships.

We will continue to make the exhibition referred to
above available for the information of the public; for
example, the 50 panels will be displayed in the Memorial
of Osthofen Concentration Camp for several weeks in early
2005. our information office also acts as a resource for
classroom materials dealing with the history of the
persecution by the Nazi dictatorship.

The Brandenburg Memorials Foundation has provided
opportunities in Sachsenhausen, on the anniversaries of
the liberation, for remembering the Jehovahs
Witnesses as one of the groups of victims of the Nazis,
and for this we are grateful. Many Jehovahs
Witnesses suffered in the Brandenburg place of execution
and in the Brandenburg concentration camps at
Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen. Plaques now commemorate
the Jehovahs Witnesses as a victim group in several
concentration camp memorial sites  plaques were put
up in Mauthausen in 1998, in Sachsenhausen in 1999, in
Buchenwald in 2002 and in Dachau in 2003. The State
Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau held a special exhibition on
the Jehovahs Witnesses prisoners with the title
"purple triangle" in the autumn of 2004.
Memories of what thousands of women, men and children had
to endure over 60 years ago because of their exemplary
efforts to defend their Christian faith can be kept alive
in a variety of ways in schools, universities, memorials
and museums.

To close, I would like to remember the approaching
liberation of the 230 Jehovahs Witnesses from
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and other camps by
quoting from a report by Karl Läufer, which reveals the
extent to which they looked after each other even under
the terrible conditions of the "Death March" to
Schwerin, known as the "evacuation" of the
camp: "In April 1945, the gates of the concentration
camp finally opened for us. The order that had prevailed
until then broke down, and so we were all able to
assemble in a single block, without supervision. First,
we prayerfully remembered the promises God had made and
spoke words of encouragement for what was coming, because
we would now be brought, under SS guard, from
Sachsenhausen to Schwerin in Mecklenburg. We left the
camp last, after all the other prisoners had marched
away. The SS entrusted us with a special task for the
journey; their valuables, packed in boxes and loaded onto
a large handcart, which we were to bring with us. On the
long march, many prisoners were shot by the SS if they
became too tired to walk any further. But it was
different with us brothers: as son as anyone became
incapable of walking any further, he was placed sitting
on the cart, and so he was taken along and saved from
death."

Willi K. PohlReligious Community of the Jehovahs Witnesses
in Germany, President